Snapper

Fantastic offer. The job was cancelled this morning. It will be on again, though. I am lucky to get a bit of work out of my friend's company - the newspaper stock pic market has crashed and this was my main business. Never mind, the kit is all paid for and the only cloud is paying my tax bill next spring. But that is some way off.... We all have our crosses to bare... MB

Nice one., Fred!

It would be nice to think these will eventually come on the market for the likes of us to play with. Agreed they look great - especially in red. I've never seen one of the new models in a private hands at an MV show. Watch this space. No doubt they won't come cheap!

Some Garands from Beltring; a lovely Dodge ambulance - a nice comparison for the pretty post war Ford Koln. When I first saw motors like this at the Hop Farm I knew I'd arrived in the right place. No more rally cars or ordinary car shows for me.... The jeep at Tilbury helps show what a great venue it was. My son James got to hold a BAR for the first time thanks to the chap manning this display and the lad nearly crumpled under the weight. He was about ten at the time.

Here you've got a nice view of Pete from Duxford working on his beloved T34. What he doesn't know about the tank isn't worth knowing. The biiger 2S3 sp gun is a 152mm model - anotther Gulf War souvenir. The Dodge comes from Beltring - 2000 I think. The Bedford QLB is a Tilbury stunner. Not many of them about....

Greetings chaps and chapesses. I am enduring a nightshift wrestling with medadata input and all kind of stuff while the England game is on in the background and Guns N Roses are blasting out of my laptop. The only good news is I have a photography job to do in Croydon on Friday. Office furniture is my lifesaver. In celebration here is another hentail from the Barnes archives.... Pix from Duxford, where I was briefly a member before domestic commitments and full time work killed any hope of me making a go of it. I used to cite driving from Southend as a problem. Other volunteers drive regularly from Kent and Sussex. But they haven't endured the A130 and A120. My excuse..... More pix from Beltring and some pix from Tilbury in the days before English Heritage dumped the lovely show put on by the Essex MVT. Nice to see they are now able to hen a snook at the short sighted people who terminated the arrangement. Tilbury was always a little gem - great venue, good organisation and very nice people. Here you've got examples of 2S1 self-propelled gun - a 122mm weapon; the MTLB fitted with Big Fred radar; PT 76 amphibious tank and a ZSU 23-4 SPAAG

Ta!

Looks like an Action Man weapon. It has more than a destinct look of light blue touch paper and stand VERY well back about it. What a shame it doesn't come with the 50 cal ranging gun. But I'd pity the PBI who'd have to carry the tripod.

D-Day? forget it. Passchendaele 90th is coming in July. It will get a few pages in between Big Brother and the American soccer season. You've just passed through ten years of a government and establishment that has been working to forget the wars, the empire and anything pre 1945. History started in 1945 when Labour won a landslide election and gave us the Welfare State. They gave us the sixties and Sergeant Pepper. They gave us everything we need to be who we are in modern Britain. Old Britain is gone. Watch it on the History Channel. If you are from Old Britain and living in 2007 you are an anomaly. I like being an Anomaly - I like being a throwback. Admiring the past doesn't mean I want rickets or to know my place or be anti-foreigner, but I live in a country that used to MAKE things and MEAN something at home and abroad. I want my country back. This view doesn't make me a fascist, it make me a nationalist- two VERY different things blurred by those who HATE my way of thinking. Alas, MY country is lost. This is the modern world. Get with the programme.

I spent my day driving to a care home in north London from Southend. Down the A13 and round the Nth Circular Rd. From there I had to drive to work through Palmers Green, Wood Green, Haringay, Manor House, Stoke Newington, Newington Green, Dalston, Shoreditch and Whitechapel to Wapping. I was IN a war zone. Enough for me.

Great picture...

See you there Jack my lad. Does the offer of a camera truck still stand??????

and finally.... point du Hoc and a couple of views of the German ossuary at Mont de Huisnes

two views of Grainges; Point du Hoc

Iron Mike, Juno, the Green Howards at Crepon

the Centaur at Pegasus Bridge, a bit of Priest, two views of Azeville

more from Varreville; Utah beach views and Longues battery

two views of Beny cemetery; a grave at La Cambe; the dunes of Varreville

The famous Sherman at Arromanches. Nice flower baskets. I keep meaning to post my 1975 snaps. Will look them out one of these years! The Spitfire in the museum at Bayeux, Essex boys return; the Memorial Pegasus.

A rusting relic at St Laurent, the grave of Rex Whistler, the grave of a para at Douvres, the grave of Den Brotheridge at Ranville.

The German cemetery at La Cambe, St Aubin, The 2nd inf div monument, a view along Omaha Beach

more... Two of the Westlake brothers at Beny-sur-Mer. A para in Ranville churchyard and two views of the Longues battery. I got stuck in the command bunker...the kids are still laughing about it four years on.

As a young fan of Cornelius Ryan I was always amazed by his turn of phrase. My Dad made me abandon kids books for history when I was about eleven or twelve and gave me the Longest Day to read. Purnell's History of The Second World War quoted Ryan in truncated form in their D-Day section of the partwork.... "It was H-Hour. They came ashore on Omaha Beach. No battle ensigns flew for them, no horns or bugles sounded; but they had history on their side." When you actually read Ryan's full quote it is much lengthier and a lot of the drama is lost. Barrie Pitt, no mean author himself, edited PHSWW and it may well have been him who sized down Ryan's prose to leave us something wholly more memorable. God bless both these authors. On this day and on 06.06.2007 bless all the veterans from the two world wars and since who have served our country well. Great War veteran Henry Allingham is 111 years old. In celebration and commemoration of our heroes, here are a few Barnes snaps from Normandy. starting with the American cemetery above Omaha Beach...

The vehicles shown are a GTMU, captured in Iraq in GW1. This has some sort of microwave device to scramble radars inside. The Mv looks similar to the little Chinese APCs seen attacking the students in Tianmen Square. But this is a Soviet design. It has another designation, but I can't remember. This is the only one I've seen. The other vehicle is a more modern MTLB fitted with a Big Fred mortar locating radar. This is more GW1 booty. I think there are a few knocking about in this config. As for T62/T64/T72 - I can barely tell the difference between the first two. But thankfully the latter is distinctive. Brilliant recollections, as ever, extra terrestrial friend, maybe you could slip in a Bob Stokoe story next time....

lovely stuff.